Inflatable items, particularly toys, are well known. Such inflatable items commonly comprise balls, floats, and air mattresses, as well as a wide variety of fanciful and realistic inflatable animals.
Inflatable balls include those which are intended for free use, i.e., throwing, kicking, bouncing, etc., as well as those which are tethered and intended for use in specific games. One example of such a tethered ball is the common tether ball, which is attached via a non-elastic tether to a pole wherein each of two players attempts to cause the ball to wrap around the pole in each of two different directions. Conventional tethered balls comprise separate attachment members or anchors for facilitating attachment thereof to the tether and valve stems for facilitating filling of the ball with air. Typically, the anchor comprises a loop or eyelet formed of a durable plastic through which the tether is tied. The attachment member is typically formed as a portion of, or attached directly to, the ball.
Various different stem arrangements, i.e., check valves, for filling and discharging air from such inflatable items are well known. Such valve stems typically comprise a hollow elongate member having a check valve, i.e., a duckbill valve disposed at the inner end thereof, such that air may be forced through the valve stem to inflate the inflatable item and the air remains therein until the duckbill valve is manually maintained in an open position so as to facilitate discharging of the air from within the inflatable item.
The duckbill valve is maintained in an open position to facilitate discharging of the air. The duckbill valve may be maintained in an open position via deformation thereof, i.e., by manually compressing or deforming the valve stem or by inserting an elongate member through the valve stem so as to prevent sealing of the check valve.
Occasionally it is desirable to attach a tether to a ball having a thin wall which prohibits exterior attachment of an anchor thereto in the manner of a contemporary tether ball. Such thin-wall construction is utilized in inflatable balls which are intended to be utilized in games wherein a player attempts to strike an opponent with the ball. Such thin-wall construction makes the ball more resilient, and thus less likely to cause pain or injury upon impact.
It is generally desirable to form thin-walled balls via low cost rotocasting. However, an anchor cannot be formed directly on a thin-walled ball via the rotocasting method since rotocasting results in a substantially even, i.e., uniform thickness, deposition of material about the surface of the mold. Since it is desirable to form the anchor of a greater wall thickness (or even as a solid member) than the thin-walled ball itself, rotocasting is unable to accomplish such construction. As such, thin-walled tether balls and the like cannot be rotocast as an integral unit. Thus, contemporary thin-walled balls are typically formed by attaching a separately fabricated anchor to a rotocast thin-walled ball.
However, such thin-wall construction necessitates that the forces generated at the attachment point during use be spread over a larger area, so as to reduce the stresses induced thereby and consequently reduce the probability of damaging the ball during use. Thus, a means for attaching one or more tethers to a ball having thin-wall construction is desirable. Such construction is particularly desirable wherein the anchor is combined with the inflation valve stem assembly so as to facilitate the use of a tether with a contemporary ball, without modification thereof,
Furthermore, the use of separate anchors and valve stem assemblies increases the cost of the inflatable item by requiring the purchase and assembly of both items into the finished product. Thus, although such contemporary inflatable items having separate anchors and valve stem assemblies have proven generally suitable for their intended purposes, they possess inherent deficiencies which detract from their overall effectiveness in the marketplace.